§ Mr. WigleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make it his policy to undertake further research into the special needs of seriously mentally ill people before the implementation of the community care proposals.
§ Mr. FreemanThe proposals for services for people with a mental illness set out in "Caring for People" build on established good practice. They envisage that health and social services professional staff will assess the health and social care needs of individual patients and judge whether these can realistically be met in the community. We plan to commission research into the effectiveness of our care programme approach in due course.